Tragic Details About Valerie Bertinelli's Son Wolfgang Van Halen

Wolfgang Van Halen has a close relationship with his mom, Valerie Bertinelli, but she's admitted that her parenting hasn't always been up to par. "I made a lot of mistakes," she said in a since-deleted Instagram video (via ABC News). The "One Day at a Time" star also isn't the only famous parent whose larger-than-life legacy Wolfgang has felt pressured to live up to, and he's had to learn the hard lesson that some people harbor resentment toward celebrity offspring like himself. "I'm just kinda trying [to] figure out my way in this world like everybody else," he told Screamer Magazine in 2023. "That can be tough."

Wolfgang's complicated relationship with his loaded surname caused him a great deal of distress as he got older. While Wolfgang and Eddie Van Halen had a strong bond, some fans of Eddie's legendary guitar solos haven't been very supportive of Wolfgang's music career. One issue some critics have is that Wolfgang's sound is so different from that of his dad's glam metal group. He's also been accused of benefitting from nepotism. "I think people can have unfair expectations about someone that comes from someone that they've seen before. I'm just trying to do my own thing," he said. 

While it's important to Wolfgang that his band, Mammoth WVH, doesn't sound like a Van Halen ripoff, he loved his father deeply. Sadly, many of his most tragic moments have ties to Eddie and his 2020 death.

Wolfgang Van Halen was only 15 when he joined his father's band, replacing Michael Anthony as bassist. In his "Behind the Music" special, Wolfgang revealed that he became acutely aware of how bad his father's struggle with addiction was after he started touring with Van Halen. "[His] pupils were black and there was nothing behind it. And it got really scary," he recalled (via Van Halen News Desk). According to Wolfgang, his parents' 2005 divorce was a catalyst for Eddie Van Halen's addiction getting worse.

Wolfgang didn't agree to join Van Halen for fame or personal glory. "I just wanted to keep my dad alive," he told Spin. He turned out to be such a positive influence on his father that Eddie checked into rehab in 2007. However, some Van Halen fans didn't see Wolfgang's addition to the band as beneficial at all. "I'd become the biggest enemy of every forty-to-fifty-year-old man out there in the world," he told Classic Rock. "It was something I didn't know how to handle. That did a lot of damage to me." In an interview with The Telegraph, Wolfgang revealed that some angry Van Halen fans even accused him of pretending to play his guitar during shows.

Singer David Lee Roth wasn't always receptive to Wolfgang's contributions to the group, either. Wolfgang told Classic Rock that Roth once refused to record a song that he, Eddie, and Alex Van Halen had been working on and were excited about.

When Wolfgang Van Halen was 8 years old, Eddie Van Halen was diagnosed with tongue cancer, which later spread to other organs. "At the end of 2017, he was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and the doctors were like, 'You have six weeks,'" Wolfgang said on "The Howard Stern Show." However, Eddie started undergoing treatments in Germany that extended his life by three years.

Two years before Eddie's lung cancer diagnosis, Wolfgang started talking to him about the possibility of a Van Halen reunion tour. However, instead of performing with Van Halen, Wolfgang would promote Mammoth WVH's debut album by opening for the group. "We were so excited about it. All of us. It just didn't pan out," he told Stern. In a later interview with The Washington Post, Wolfgang blamed the COVID-19 protocols in place in 2020 for halting his dad's trips to Germany and destroying any possibility of one final Van Halen hurrah.

Wolfgang delayed the release of Mammoth WVH's self-titled album to be with his dad in his final years. On "Behind the Music" (via People), he recalled getting a phone call from Eddie on the day he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. According to Wolfgang, what his father was saying to him didn't make sense. "It's not easy to see someone you look up to as a pillar of strength — and have to be that pillar of strength yourself," Wolfgang said.

In October 2020, Wolfgang Van Halen shared the tragic news that Eddie Van Halen had died at age 65. "My heart is broken and I don't think I'll ever fully recover from this loss," he tweeted. A month later, Wolfgang released his single "Distance" and an accompanying music video that featured emotional home movie footage of him and his dad. In one of the early shots, Eddie beams while holding his baby boy. Wolfgang wrote the song before Eddie's death, but it's about losing his parent. Still, he told USA Today he expected Eddie to be alive when he released it. On "The Howard Stern Show," Wolfgang also shared that performing would forever be bittersweet for him without his dad in his life. "There's no way I'll never be able to think about him no matter what I do — which is good but also hurts a lot," he said.

Wolfgang told Rolling Stone that his dad's final days traumatized him so much that it's become unbearable for him to watch scenes on television series that take place in hospital settings. "Even hearing hospital sounds is a huge triggering thing now. I don't even like hearing things like an automatic dispenser for hand sanitizer. ... It's almost a PTSD-like trigger," he said. 

On the first anniversary of Eddie's death, Wolfgang wrote on Instagram, "I miss you so much it hurts. I'm trying to do my best here without you, but it's really f***ing hard."

Wolfgang Van Halen wasn't impressed with his dad's Grammys tribute, and he also had several complaints about the media's coverage of Eddie Van Halen's death. In an October 2020 tweet, he accused Us Weekly of misrepresenting a cover story by making it seem like the tabloid had interviewed his mom when it had not. "The only thing printed in this piece of toilet paper that's true is that we all loved my father," he wrote.

Wolfgang was also furious with TMZ for publishing details about Eddie's death certificate. In response to a since-deleted tweet from someone who had a problem with Wolfgang calling the outlet "scum," Wolfgang wrote, "If you f*** with my family, especially my father who is unable to defend himself, you f*** with me." He put TMZ on blast again in 2023 when a user on X, formerly known as Twitter, accused the webloid of using shady means to obtain information about the death of "Friends" star Matthew Perry. "They paid off people in the hospital when my father passed. Couldn't even f***ing grieve for 20 minutes. Like I said ... scum," Wolfgang wrote in response.

Wolfgang lashed out at the Reelz channel as well when it covered Eddie's death for its docuseries "Autopsy: The Last Hours Of...". He tweeted, "F***ing disgusting trying to glamorize someone's death from cancer. Pathetic and heartless."

Wolfgang Van Halen has been open about his experiences with depression and anxiety. In his 2023 interview with Classic Rock, he listed off a few of the factors that have contributed to his mental health issues, including Eddie Van Halen's substance use problems and an unfaithful ex whom he had been in a long-term relationship with since high school. "I had a family member steal from me," he added. Wolfgang told The Washington Post that the ex also ran up charges on one of his credit cards after their breakup.

Internet trolls are another big stressor Wolfgang has dealt with frequently. Many of his are haters who can't stand to see him succeeding in his musical endeavors. Because he bears his father's surname, some people just want to write him off as a privileged nepo baby. "I'm not a person to some people," he told Classic Rock. "I'm just an extension of the name." In 2022, the online vitriol was starting to take a serious toll on him. "I don't think my emotional and mental well-being have been any lower," he told Guitar World (via Guitar.com).

Wolfgang has taken on his trolls directly on their turf and addressed them in his music, but he decided to try a different approach to dealing with toxic internet behavior in 2024. "I've taken a step back and it's done wonders for my mental health," he said on the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast.